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JUSTICE, JUSTICE, YOU SHALL PURSUE: Jewish Political Artists and American Popular Culture Paul Von Blum UCLA Political artists have occupied a pivotal role in American art history, especially from the early 20th century to the present. Painters, muralists, sculptors, photographers, cartoonists, poster makers, and other artists have been integral to numerous movements for social change for many decades. Thousands of artworks, addressing all progressive issues and reflecting every movement for social change, have created a huge cumulative legacy. These powerful visual works have inspired many thousands of Americans to become active public citizens through social criticism and political dissent. Jewish artists have been in the forefront of this American tradition of political art since the early decades of the 20th century. Working in the tradition of such renowned socially conscious artistic predecessors as Francisco Goya, Honore Daumier, Kathe Kollwitz, Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and hundreds of others, they have often invoked an historical biblical mandate to support their visual expressions of political and social criticism and dissent. Refusing to remain indifferent to the vast complex of social and political ills in America and throughout the world, they have sought to combine their passion for social justice with their outstanding talent as visual artists. Their artworks, spanning the decades, are concrete visual examples of the historic Jewish commitment to social justice. Above all, they reflect a passionate moral vision that has pervaded Jewish social activism in the labor movement, the civil rights movement, the feminist movement, the environmental movement, the gay and lesbian movement, various anti-war movements, and virtually every other political cause to which the injunction “justice, justice, shall you pursue” applies (Deuteronomy 16: 18). The list of American Jewish political artists is enormous—and growing in the early years of the 21st century. A multi-volume edition would scarcely suffice to provide a comprehensive critical treatment of the many hundreds of accomplished Jewish political artists in America. Many of these talented men and women produced artworks that fall directly within the sphere of popular culture. Like many political artists throughout history, Jewish socially conscious artists have sought the broadest audiences for their work, frequently eschewing the elite art world requirement to produce individual paintings and sculptures destined for museum and private gallery exhibition and for affluent private collectors and consumers. Although many American Jewish artists have been first-rate painters and sculptors, they have often used other art forms like prints, photographs, murals, cartoons, and posters in order to attract viewers far beyond the narrow confines of elite culture. Their democratic vision of public accessibility directly reflects their view that political artworks should catalyze social action rather than augment the conspicuous consumption of art. Some Jewish political artists dedicated to popular cultural expression and dissemination are highly visible and extremely well represented in art historical and critical literature. Others are much less well known; they are routinely neglected, even now, because their overtly critical imagery has offended mainstream critics and scholars. Both groups, however, deserve substantial examination and much further exposure to specialists and laypersons alike. Ben Shahn (1898-1969) may well be the most famous figure in American art history to fuse brilliant artistic technique and political commitment and commentary. It is appropriate, accordingly, to commence this survey of Jewish political artists contributing to popular culture with this iconic figure who exemplified the efforts of the artists known as Social Realists. Born in Lithuania, he grew up in Jewish Brooklyn with an atmosphere of social radicalism and repugnance to the pervasive injustices of early 20th century life in America. This background informed his artistic life throughout his long career. The infamous Sacco-Vanzetti case had a powerful influence on his decision to create socially conscious art. The Massachusetts execution in 1927 of the two Italian- American anarchists focused Shahn’s attention on the deeper problems of xenophobia, social class inequities, persecution of political dissenters, and numerous related issues. His response was to use his art to call widespread public attention to a case that still stands as one of the most egregious cases of judicial injustice and misconduct in U.S. history. His series of Sacco-Vanzetti images, executed from 1931 to 1933, marked his emergence as one of the finest political artists in the modern era. Ben Shahn ‘s works include a huge number of artworks within the tradition of popular culture beyond his record as a socially oriented muralist. A gifted photographer and poster maker, he produced hundreds of artworks in these mediums that reflected his lifelong quest for justice. He was one of the major photographers working in the Farm Security Administration, chronicling the Depression’s human tragedy. Shahn’s photographs captured the deep pathos of the era, adding a powerful dimension to his long record of humanistic popular cultural expressions. Throughout his career, Shahn also produced scores of posters in the same vein. In 1941-42, he worked for the Office of War Information, producing several works dealing with the horrific suffering in the war against fascism. In 1944, he joined the Political Action Committee of the Congress of Industrial Organizations. Sympathetic to labor’s historic struggles, he executed many posters with trenchant social commentary, adding further to his prolific record of visual commentary with wide public appeal. Later in his life, he also produced posters condemning nuclear proliferation, the war in Vietnam, opposing reactionary politicians, and supporting the modern civil rights movement. His death ended a magnificent chapter in the history of American political art. Ben Shahn was only one of many Jewish artists, roughly of the same generation, who created popular cultural visual forms in pursuit of Deuteronomy’s justice requirement. Another key figure in the Social Realist tradition was William Gropper (1897-1978), whose entire artistic life was devoted to a progressive political vision. His early childhood in the Jewish ghetto of New York’s Lower East Side, with both parents working in the city’s notorious sweatshops, imbued him with a class- consciousness that pervaded all his paintings, murals, drawings, and cartoons. Like Shahn, he joined his political passions with a profound sense of his personal Jewish identity, returning regularly to Jewish themes throughout his exemplary career. Gropper’s early work as a cartoonist provided him with large and appreciative audiences. He was the featured cartoonist and pictorial satirist for the New Masses, influential in the 1930s and successor to the earlier radical publications The Masses and Liberator. Although most of Gropper’s cartoons for the Masses and other popular publications were ephemeral comments on topical issues of the day, some achieved a more universal character because their content transcended the times and provided visual commentary of equal relevance in the present. Shahn and Gropper were among the most visible of Jewish political artists of their era. Still, their collective contributions to visual popular culture only scratch the surface of this engaging tradition. Many others created political artworks (including works that are part of visual popular culture) reflecting their Jewish or partial Jewish identities: Edward Biberman, Julius Bloch, Peter Blume, Philip Evergood, Aaron Goodelman, Philip Guston, Minna Harkavy, Joseph Hirsch, Louis Lozowick, Mitchell Siporin, Isaac Soyer, Moses Soyer, Raphael Soyer, Harry Sternberg, and others. Some of these artists have substantial critical recognition in art historical circles and from those who respect political art, especially with Jewish origins and themes. Some of these talented Jewish artists, however, have suffered from an appalling paucity of critical recognition from the mid-20th century to the present. Figures like Biberman, Bloch, Goodelman, Harkavy, Siporin, and Sternberg are rarely presented in surveys of American art and are virtually unknown among contemporary scholars and students alike in the post-war period. Two other Jewish political artists of this generation, Hugo Gellert and Arthur Szyk, are likewise usually omitted from the canon of American art history. Their extensive commitment to popular culture mandates sympathetic consideration in the present survey. Arthur Szyk (1894-1951) deserves renewed critical attention in the early 21st century. He remains a tragically neglected figure in American art history. Deeply Jewish in his identity as an artist and as a human being, his entire body of work reflected a passionate response to the traumatic political events of the early 20th century. Born in Poland, where he experienced harsh anti-Semitism as a young man, he spent his early years as an artist in Paris and London, finally arriving in America in 1940. He saw his adopted land as a bastion of freedom against the fascist threat in Europe. Like other politically active artists, he turned his critical attention to the complex of problems besetting America at the time. Soon after his arrival, he used his art to attack the seemingly intractable problem of racism

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